Photonics systems designed to generate, guide, modulate, and sense light have many important commercial applications as well as applications in technology and science. Examples of applications in which photonics systems may be used to advantage include telecommunications, signal processing, optical computing, holography, and medicine, to name a few. Silicon photonics utilizes silicon as an optical medium, thereby further advantageously enabling the integration of photonic devices and electronic components on the same silicon die.
The fabrication of a silicon die including photonic devices and electronic components may be performed using conventional semiconductor fabrication facilities and many conventional techniques. Nevertheless, the alignment of light emitting devices with optical components for guiding the emitted light through the silicon die imposes new constraints on conventional semiconductor processing techniques. Because precise alignment of light emitting with light guiding features can be critical to device and system performance, there is a need in the art for new techniques for integrating photonics devices with electronic circuitry on a silicon die.